No scam gets us this kind of good

"If someone offers you an opportunity that sounds too good to be true, take time to pray."

By Robert A. Johnson

Suppose You Receive a telephone call telling you that you've won $56,000 in a sweepstakes. All you have to do is to send $1,900 to pay taxes and other fees. An Illinois senior citizen who received such a call was suspicious and telephoned the sheriff's office. Sheriff's detectives learned from investigators that the sweepstakes was a scam, that "victims have been reported from all over the US and Canada and that the majority of them are senior citizens" (Chicago Tribune, November 16, 1999).

Or suppose that on the Internet you see that by sending an application fee of from $35–$40 you can qualify for a job stuffing envelopes at home and make between $2,500 and $4,500 a month. Looking into just such an offer, postal authorities have accused four Hollywood, California, men of "sending 50 million phony job offers to Internet users across the country" (Los Angeles Times, November 10, 1999).

Though older people are most ofter mentioned as the target, scams concern everyone and are a big enough problem that the United States Postal Service has sent a warning against them to every residential address. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation reports that telemarketing fraud robs citizens of $40–$60 billion a year.